This is a review and detailed measurements of the FiiO BTR7 portable battery operated USB & Bluetooth DAC and THX balanced headphone amplifier. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $199.99.
A bright, high contrast IPS LCD greets you with lovely/star-trek style fonts which I liked very much. I was also happy to see detailed information about the bit rate (24 "Bits" above). I would have wanted a larger volume level though. And acceleration in the volume control:
The rocker up/down volume control provides much finer level adjustment than that built into the operating system which was nice. On the left there is a very useful button to tell the unit to charge or not over USB input, eliminating having to have two such connectors:
The companion Bluetooth app provides nice control of the unit including the ability to "boost" the balanced output by fair bit. Alas, choice of DAC filters is not exposed so you have to use the unit's own UI to change that.
The unit is quite light with dimensions that are about 2/3 the size of a typical smartphone.
There is a ton of functionality in the unit including parametric EQ and wireless charging! I even appreciate the very flexible silicone USB-C wire to connect to your phone (which operated well with my Samsung).
There is a ton to measure here between multiple outputs, low and high gain plus balanced boost. I tried to navigate through the matrix without going crazy.
FiiO BTR7 Measurements
Let's start with our dashboard of unbalanced 3.5mm output at max volume:
Nice to see over 2 volts meaning you have a shot at getting decent output from high-impedance headphones. Performance degrades some though from the optimal 2 volts that pushes SINAD to 100 dB. You do get that in balanced mode however with and without boost:
This lands the unit in "very good" category of all DACs tested and is especially good for a portable product. Here is Bluetooth wireless using LDAC at 0.6 mbit/sec datarate:
Note that this involves Android OS resampling so can't quite say it is the native performance of the unit (I used my Roon player).
Multitone performance is quite good as well:
Noise performance is excellent for class:
For some reason though, unbalanced 3.5mm has better dynamic range as you can see in 50 mv test:
That lands the unit in well above average placement:
IMD performance is very good for class until it saturates:
Jitter is again excellent for a portable device:
Linearity lands in the same department:
Two reconstruction filters are provided:
Default is the red one which I do not recommend. It almost looks like it is using the filter for 48 kHz sampling.
THD+N vs frequency could be better:
Most important thing in this class of device is power output so let's measure balanced first:
I measured but do not show low gain mode as it only reduces output power but doesn't do anything else. Might as well use high gain. I like to see 100 milliwatts in desktop headphone amps. It is nice to see BTR7 coming so close to that in this small enclosure.
Here is 32 ohm:
This is tons more power than a headphone dongle. Devices with internal battery are inherently more capable in producing higher voltages and current needed.
You naturally lose good bit of power with unbalanced/3.5mm output:
But you get lower noise floor so better fit for IEMs.
FiiO BTR7 Headphone Listening Tests
I tested the unit with both Sennheiser HD650 and Drop Ether CX. In both cases there was plenty of volume, bass and detail. With HD650 I could almost get my ear lobes to resonate at max/unsafe volume. With Ether CX, deep bass with max volume would cause some distortion but you could back off and still have very usable volume. This is level of performance that you just can't get out of a typical dongle.
Conclusions
Features and look of the FiiO BTR7 alone would set it aside from competition, justifying its price premium. Add desktop class performance and you get a complete package that puts a smile on your face. Well, it did on my face.
I am happy to recommend FiiO BTR7.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
A bright, high contrast IPS LCD greets you with lovely/star-trek style fonts which I liked very much. I was also happy to see detailed information about the bit rate (24 "Bits" above). I would have wanted a larger volume level though. And acceleration in the volume control:
The rocker up/down volume control provides much finer level adjustment than that built into the operating system which was nice. On the left there is a very useful button to tell the unit to charge or not over USB input, eliminating having to have two such connectors:
The companion Bluetooth app provides nice control of the unit including the ability to "boost" the balanced output by fair bit. Alas, choice of DAC filters is not exposed so you have to use the unit's own UI to change that.
The unit is quite light with dimensions that are about 2/3 the size of a typical smartphone.
There is a ton of functionality in the unit including parametric EQ and wireless charging! I even appreciate the very flexible silicone USB-C wire to connect to your phone (which operated well with my Samsung).
There is a ton to measure here between multiple outputs, low and high gain plus balanced boost. I tried to navigate through the matrix without going crazy.
FiiO BTR7 Measurements
Let's start with our dashboard of unbalanced 3.5mm output at max volume:
Nice to see over 2 volts meaning you have a shot at getting decent output from high-impedance headphones. Performance degrades some though from the optimal 2 volts that pushes SINAD to 100 dB. You do get that in balanced mode however with and without boost:
This lands the unit in "very good" category of all DACs tested and is especially good for a portable product. Here is Bluetooth wireless using LDAC at 0.6 mbit/sec datarate:
Note that this involves Android OS resampling so can't quite say it is the native performance of the unit (I used my Roon player).
Multitone performance is quite good as well:
Noise performance is excellent for class:
For some reason though, unbalanced 3.5mm has better dynamic range as you can see in 50 mv test:
That lands the unit in well above average placement:
IMD performance is very good for class until it saturates:
Jitter is again excellent for a portable device:
Linearity lands in the same department:
Two reconstruction filters are provided:
Default is the red one which I do not recommend. It almost looks like it is using the filter for 48 kHz sampling.
THD+N vs frequency could be better:
Most important thing in this class of device is power output so let's measure balanced first:
I measured but do not show low gain mode as it only reduces output power but doesn't do anything else. Might as well use high gain. I like to see 100 milliwatts in desktop headphone amps. It is nice to see BTR7 coming so close to that in this small enclosure.
Here is 32 ohm:
This is tons more power than a headphone dongle. Devices with internal battery are inherently more capable in producing higher voltages and current needed.
You naturally lose good bit of power with unbalanced/3.5mm output:
But you get lower noise floor so better fit for IEMs.
FiiO BTR7 Headphone Listening Tests
I tested the unit with both Sennheiser HD650 and Drop Ether CX. In both cases there was plenty of volume, bass and detail. With HD650 I could almost get my ear lobes to resonate at max/unsafe volume. With Ether CX, deep bass with max volume would cause some distortion but you could back off and still have very usable volume. This is level of performance that you just can't get out of a typical dongle.
Conclusions
Features and look of the FiiO BTR7 alone would set it aside from competition, justifying its price premium. Add desktop class performance and you get a complete package that puts a smile on your face. Well, it did on my face.
I am happy to recommend FiiO BTR7.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
